Keyser Corleone's Movie Memoirs

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2 weeks ago
Look's like there's gonna be a new live-action Thundercats with Adam Wingard set to direct. Heaven help us if Lion-O is wearing the mankini from the original cartoon. I won't mind so much if it ends up being more like the 2011 cartoon. I saw like three episodes and decided that it was quite the cool show, but not my thing (I was more into Martin Mystery). On top of this, I'm also looking forward to a similar show coming out soon: Disney's live-action Gargoyles. Watched the hell outta that as a kid. But the thing is they really have to get the character appearances right, or else they might fail.

Unfortunately, this review doesn't actually have anything to do with live-action 90's furry cartoons. I'm saying this because there are some who are looking foreward to this Thundercats movie, and have the audacity to say this movie looked creepy:

Cats
(2019) - Directed by Tom Hooper
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Musical / Dance Film / Fantasy
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"A new day has begun."


OK, I'm just gonna come out and say it: YOU DON'T GO TO SEE A LIVE-ACTION CATS MOVIE UNLESS YOU KNOW THE CATS WOULD LOOK LIKE THIS. Didn't anyone ever even see pictures of the original stage play? Look at what they're wearing. Nobody gets to complain about GWAR anymore. I mean, what's really different? The noses? Shortened female breasts that don't have nipples? I'm a B-movie horror fan who has a Deviantart account. I have seen far worse than this. Yes, I was a bit creeped out the first time I saw the trailer, but I knew what I was getting into and I got used to it the second time. No, this isn't a perfect situation, and the appearances do need improvements. But save it for the original Sonic design.

Victoria is a simple white cat who is dumped off in an alley. When the cat's let out of the bag, she meets a group of cats who are all gathered together to see who will be chosen to ascend to a new "Jellicle" life up in the sky. To prove themselves, they must put on a musical performance about themselves. But one other cat plans to cheat and kidnap the others so that he's the only one left.

CON 1: Now I already expressed that I wasn't as bothered by the appearances as most people, but I'll still say that One thing that really got on my nerves, however, was seeing one orange cat in vivid red overalls dancing with everyone else who may or may not be wearing a collar. I have to wonder what they were thinking by making this decision to have like only five or six people wear clothes. If they added a little clothing and maybe gave the cast cat-noses on their faces, there might be a bit of a difference.

CON 2: If you ever saw Village of the Giants by Bert I. Gordon, you'd either laugh at or be bothered by the tiny tray given to the giants which suddenly grows large enough to notice onscreen when the giants hold them. This exact same problem plagues many of the scenes involved. If they had built the sets properly and just used CGI on the cast's appearances and the backgrounds, this problem wouldn't even exist. Even if it's little things, it can be a problem. Example: Only tiny kittens could possible wear a ring on a wrist. I liked seeing Old Duet lying in a basket, though. That was kinda cute.

CON 3: Character development is severely limited here. I don't know whether or not this is replicated directly from the musical, but the characters' development is largely limited to their solos' lyrics. I know for a fact that if I did a Cats movie myself, I would change that. This can also be noticed in the lacking dialogue and development of our lead, Victoria.

CON 4: There really isn't much of a story going on here. Many of the story sequences feel a bit empty and lifeless simply because the cast members aren't evolving with their roles, and the characters as they go along. In the end, there is very little difference between Munkustrap and Skimbleshanks. This also leaves some musical scenes to lack emotions as well. I got a more emotional reaction out of the Moments of Happiness bit from Bigtop Burger. The plot fits absolute basics for building up its world, so if there were more rules to this world, or character development, things would be a lot more active than just having a bunch of musical numbers.

And now for the good stuff.

PRO 1: This problem with the proportions might be on parade here, but I won't deny that a lot of effort went into the spectacle. In fact, there just may be enough successful and colorful spectacle to distract from some of these continuity errors.

PRO 2: There are some surprisingly good casting choices here. Jason Derulo really nails Rum Tum Tugger. I think he was just being himself in this movie. Leave it to Rebel Wilson to even play a cat at all. I mean, seriously? let's be honest. She's already a cat... not that he singing voice is very good, just energetic. And no matter what you put Judi Dench, Ian McKellen and Idris Elba in, they'll be able to nail the role. I'm actually a bit of a Judi Dench man myself, I grew up with McKellen, and I acknowledge Idris Elba's fantastic performance as Knuckles, despite the fact that Knuckles is supposed to be 16 and Elba's voice is like 35 at the youngest. And yes: Jennifer Hudson. Her voice is absolutely incredible. The world needs more Jennifer Hudson. In fact, just getting her is enough to raise the score. Unfortunately... Ian McKellen's age has gotten to his singing voice.

PRO 2.5: Taylor Swift. Like, I'm not a fan of her at all, and she was freaking awesome in this.

PRO 3: Take it from a guy who's been raised around cats ever since he was eight: the dancers are moving exactly like cats. That's easily scarier than the CGI, but in a good way. The fact that the choreographers nailed those motions so well is probably the best thing about this movie, and helps these otherwise unsettling appearances to feel more real (take that as a moviemaking pro and an eye-popping con if you want).

PRO 4: The music wasn't bad. Sometimes the melodies felt a little wonky, but the rhythms and bombast were certainly there. I questioned multiple times whether there really was no involvement from Jim Steinman. I mean, take the ballet scene. It was like I was listening to either his only studio album, Bad for Good, one of the 80's songs he wrote for Meat Loaf or something he wrote for Bonnie Tyler. But these songs don't always have a strong sense of feeling. Iam McKellen's number is a good example.

Well, if there's one thing I learned from this, it's that I can in fact watch a whole movie of cat people dancing. Cats is certainly not a good movie, but worst of the year? I just checked my log and found thirteen films I ranked lower, including RoboWoman, You'd Be Surprised, Loqueesha, Arctic Dogs and The Big Trip. This is way easier on the eyes than people give it credit for, and I largely believe it's because most people haven't been exposed to the worst of the worst. To bring back the cartoon craze, I've seen things that would make the Toxic Crusaders vomit.
= 41

Tom Hooper needs 1 more film for a directorial score.
Last edited by KeyserCorleone; 1 week ago at 03:37 PM.



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1 week ago
Fellini's Satyricon
(1969) - Directed by Federico Fellini
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Surrealism / Classical Antiquity / Sword and Sandal
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"As for me, I have always lived to enjoy the present moment as if it were the last sunrise."



I took ONE look at my top movies of 1969 out of curiosity, and absolutely hated it. I had two MST3K movies in it. That's how uneducated I am in 60's cinema, even after nearly 3000 movies. I still want to make a top 50 for 1972 first, but I'm gonna get another movie from that time out of the way and check out The Wild Bunch later to help with my westerns. I chose this one because I was in the mood for classical antiquity, and Fellini's my favorite Italian director. Italian cinema is one of my favorite subjects, after all. This will be my tenth Fellini film, but it must be noted that this is one of Fellini's attempts at capturing a whole culture rather than telling a story, much like La Dolce Vita, Roma and Amarcord, all of which I've seen already, so I really hoped to enjoy this.

I had a horrible time trying to find a proper dub of this. One Italian-dubbed YT video made the MGM and United Artist logos look zoomed in, so I assumed the rest was zoomed in. Then I found an English language video and compared it to the first, only to find that the only thing off about the first video was he opening logos, so I wasted time looking for a proper one. I chose the English one so I wouldn't be bothered by the fact that some Italian lines have subtitles and others don't, assuming they were speaking Italian like it sounded like instead of the Latin or Greek RYM said it also had. But then I got 40 minutes into the English dub before I realized that the SAME VOICE was being used on two different characters. I decided, "You know what? I'm fed up. I'll bite whatever bullet that apparently Fellini and Criterion didn't bother fixing for crying out loud." Thankfully, I got confirmation on Reddit that they were also speaking Greek, Latin and gibberish. That seriously relieved me because that creates a cultural feeling of various worlds colliding together in the same space even though you may only speak one or two of the languages. So I went with the Italian dub, which had less cheesy voices and delivery.

As the title suggests, Fellini's Satyricon is his own adaptation of a classical literary work that remains incomplete to this day, as the rest is still missing. As a result, this film is an episodic journey through Ancient Rome concerning two men fighting for the same romantic slave.

This film is apparently one of the most challenging ones Fellini ever made. Episodic structure, a sense of disjointedness to create feelings like cultural authenticity and even alienation, and especially the reliance on poetic thematic dialogue in lieu of conventional plotting make this the kind of movie that will draw a lot of people away. It might be a good idea for me to watch this movie and others like it before heading into Coppola's upcoming Megalopolis, which is said to be extremely visual but narratively experimental, like this.

But if you know what the Satyricon is, then you don't watch an adaptation unless you know there's a chance it'll be a wild adventure. On top of that, it's literally called "Fellini's Casanova." This is the kind of film that will be sought out by fans of Fellini's quirky and sometimes experimental style, because this is one of the Fellini movies only the fans will look for.

We begin the movie with two of the leads addressing us directly, catching us up like a play or whatnot. In other words, we are travellers and spectators in this world, and that's how our minds should behave during the remainder of the movie. And so our journey through Ancient Rome truly becomes a mystifying history lesson.

Having just watched the original Suspiria yesterday before going to see Furiosa, I was more than mentally prepared for another movie loaded with mystique. Fellini's got a sense of surrealist mystique here that's created through simple stone walls with occasional hieroglyphic graffiti the likes of the chalk drawings on either a cave wall or the gruesome ones on that one painting seen in A Clockwork Orange. Through its grotesque and simple chiseled caves passing themselves off as homes, we have both a feeling of poverty and a feeling of classical antiquity that creates a deathly mystique thanks to Fellini's sense of smoky clouds and deep lighting. As we pass through alleys and castles, we can't help but feel that these royals of a supposedly grand time are swimming in their own shit. Even as the sky glows with various shades of the same color, it looms over the many citizens of Rome as a sign of the apocalypse. Sometimes even heavy dust clouds are all it takes to turn Ancient Rome into a Mad Max movie. Even mere situations can be dreamlike, rather than set pieces, which means Fellini's dreamlike structure evolves into storytelling, partially via the episodic structure and partially through the cultural aspects.

Obviously, this is a far different form of hypnotism than Suspiria, but one that's just as effective. And why? Because the movie isn't shoving ART into our faces with a big budget. It's shoving REALISM into our faces. Instead of that perfect-looking glistening plastic cheeseburger we see in the commercials, we get the real life lump of meat and bread in a tightly-wrapped paper.

The visuals aren't alone in this theme.

The most common criticism from what I've read is that the episodic structure is lacking and random as a result of the recreation of the source material's forgotten parts. The plot moves a little more consistently than one might think. Within the episodes are little connections that must be held onto during this adventure, that way we get to see our lead Encolpius grow as he travels this world. When I think about it, the lead travelling Rome is barely any different than the knight in The Seventh Seal, if not completely the same in spirit. This shift between episodes also leads to some unexpected surprises. Even though the exact narrative and plotting of this film is challenging and not always connected, we're taken into a dozen different angles of how these people lived, or at least the Fellini translation. Either way, it feels real, largely because the settings aren't "too" extravagant and the actors are having fun.

Culture plays a heavy role in the world building and atmospheres. There are times when the story will dive into other stories told and taken from Roman literature. There's even one scene involving the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. This is because a major theme of the movie is cultural exploration, and there are even instances where we are being taught of Rome's relationship to Greece. This theme is further explored through much of the characters' dialogue, as comparisons to life and art are typically present, especially through the words of the poet character Eumolpus. Even ceremonies with their own shred of ridiculousness rely on the real world history of primitive technique and entertainment to maintain a balance between reality and absurdity. The fact that these characters are having such a good time with the seeming stupidity of much of what happens makes it feel as real as it does riotous.

Further on the subject of dialogue, I quickly grew to accept the refusal to subtitle Greek, Latin and gibberish as not only a world-building device, but one that ties into the theme of letting us be spectators on the tour rather than an audience. No matter what the bud is, we only speak the language of the main character. Everyone else's speech has to be guessed, which adds not only the feeling that you're surrounded by fellow citizens from other worlds, but maintains a sense of mystery within the drama and comedy. This is probably the most genius aspect of the film. On top of this, the Italian dubbing perfectly matches the actors, even the English-speaking Martin Potter as the lead. They feel natural.

There's only one real flaw with the movie. Encolpius is our lead, and he has a decent level of development as his speeches and actions define a huge part of the movie. But the thing is that it's much easier to get invested in the world he explores rather than in him. To me, this is the only real drawback of the faithful episodic structure, because the situations that happen to him in each individual segment don't often connect other aspects from other segments.

The obvious truth about Satyricon is that it demands to be studied. It's a consistently formed movie but a real challenge. This movie isn't necessarily a "story" as much as it is a "tour" through culture, a revelation of everything we know and may have missed in the stories we tell of ancient times. And if you can accept that, you might have a much better time with this movie, as many of the directions this movie takes have either adventure, comedy or mystique to them if not two or three of them simultaneously. Fellini's basically going on a drunken rampage getting horny on his own style, much like Snyder did with 300... except this is good. We have a very strong theme connecting all the different worlds explored, justifying the lack of a strict plot. Fellini was able to fully capture the disjointedness of an incomplete piece of literature through theme, and I think that's a form of genius that requires another genius to replicate.

Shoulda' got him to edit Welles' incomplete Don Quixote instead of Franco.

= 97

Federico Fellini's Directorial Score (10 Good vs. 0 Bad)

8 1/2: 100
Nights of Cabiria: 100
La Dolce Vita: 100
Satyricon: 97
Juliet of the Spirits: 95

Average Score: 98.4 / 5
Staying Score: 100 / 5

Because he has three 100's, Fellini maintains a staying score of 100. His average will be used for ordering against other directors with a perfect staying score. Fellini moves up on my Best Directors List from #5 to #3 between Alfred Hitchcock and Andrey Tarkovsky.
Last edited by KeyserCorleone; 1 week ago at 11:14 PM.



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2 days ago
Yentl
(1983) - Directed by Barbra Streisand
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Musical / Historical Drama / Romance
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"Why is it people who want the truth never believe it when they hear it?"


This is the first official musical film I've seen for the Movieforums Top 100 Musicals Countdown. Having said that, this was only one of two majore reasons. Truth is my mother invited me to watch it with her, I had forgotten about it but knew it was on my to-do list so I went ahead with it. One third but less important reason was because I was curious about other Streisand roles after having adored her in What's Up Doc by Peter Bogdanovich. So apparently she starred in, directed, produced and wrote this film. So let's see where her passion lead to...

Yentl is a Jewish woman who's fed up with the sexist ideal that women shouldn't read the Torah. After her priest father passes away, she decides to disguise herself as a boy and take her father's place in the Chi- I mean, seek an education at an all-boy's school. While there, she befriends, and falls in love with, an energetic but inquisitive student (Mandy Patinkin) who's actually in love with someone else. And all the while, the expectations of manhood are thrown towards her.

Having just written three reviews for Judas Priest albums and watched this movie, I'm still not pop-cultured out for the day as I want to seek another musical to watch, one that will be more to my liking. First, lemme make it clear that I heard a bunch of mixed things about this movie. Brilliant, lame, alright, yadda yadda.

Now a personal favorite Disney movie of mine is Mulan. Saw it 100 times as a kid. Mulan handled the idea of gender roles in ways that were never too uncomfortable and even left a lot of room for the awkward comedy of Mulan dealing with a bunch of grown guys. There really isn't much of that here in Yentl. It shoves the theme down your throats after two minutes and relies on the shoving to tell its story, leading many characters to come off as empty save that one quality.

As a writer, I'm a stickler for character development. There are only two characters who ever get any actual development here: Yentl and Avigdor. Now the two work brilliantly as an awkward romantic pairing rooted in a deep friendship, which is made more powerful and artistically awkward based on its signature misunderstanding. The sparks fly in some incredible and even unique ways. I wish these two would come together more often. Having said that, I did NOT like Avigdor as a person. He was grabby and loudmouthed, never taking the time to listen. He was way too much of a product of his time, which brings me back to my criticism of shoving the theme down people's throats. In fact, I would love more development for Amy Irving's character, as she did a good job with what little she had.

Of course, our situation also allows us to see many things through Yentl's eyes, especially when she's singing. In some cases there are lyrics with a deep analysis mirroring the intelligence and perception seen in our lead, tackling the subjects of each song from varying angles in extremely poetic ways. This, when paired with the strong sentimentality and emotional core of the songs, makes up for the lacking and messy rhythms which are more geared towards allowing Streisand a chance to sing rather than to feel like a musical number, which might be best for the theme to stay away from the obnoxiousness of typical musicals. However, maybe actual choreographed numbers might lighten the sexism a little.

As for Streisand's work as an actress and director: excellent work. Not only is her performance more convincing than her brilliant work in What's Up Doc, but as a director she's showing a lot of skill in the cinematography and emotional departments. Some scenes are a little like a music video, but this lady always knows exactly where to put the camera. Some scenes are just EPIC.

Streisand really did impress in some ways here, and disappoint in a couple of ways for me. Yentl is a collection of both strong and weak points, albeit more strong. I don't know if I'll ever go back to this movie, but it said only good things for Streisand's future. Yentl may tug at the heartstrings of those in tune with the theme, but it feels a little overdone for me. I'd put this in the same league as Jeanne Dielman.

= 68

Barbra Streisand needs 2 more films for a Directorial Score.

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